Re: The
number three

: : can someone help me
with with research on the number three for example three wiseman, three blind
mice three's a crowd.

: This explanation of "three on a match" has a factlet
about the number "three":

: Information from "How Did It Begin: A fascinating
study of the superstitions, customs, and strange habits that influence our daily
lives" by R. Brash (Pocket Book, New York, 1969):

: LIGHTING THREE CIGARETTES
WITH ONE MATCH - The Holy Trinity, commercial interests and self-protection in
time of war, are cited as the direct cause of aversion to lighting three cigarettes
with one match.

: Three is the symbol of the trinity. To make a mundane use
of it was to defile its sanctity and to transgress the holy law. Man would invite
disaster and put himself into the power of the 'evil one.' Thus, a match, trebly
used, would light the fires of Hell for one's own soul.

: Another, less fearful
tradition claims that the superstition first arose among British troops during
the Crimean War. They learned from Russian captives of the danger of using any
light for a threefold purpose. They were told that it was the sacred rule of the
Orthodox Church that the three candles on the altar were not to be lit from a
single taper, except when the High Priest used it. However, a more likely explanation
of the origin of the custom is that British soldiers, entrenched against Dutch
foes in the Boer War, learned by bitter experience of the danger of lighting three
cigarettes from one match. When the men thriftily used one match to serve three
of them, they gave the Boer sniper time to spot the light, take aim and fire,
killing 'the third man.'

: Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish match king, certainly did
not create the superstition, as it has been alleged, but he made the widest possible
use of it to promote sales. People, innately superstitious, did not mind wasting
a match. After all, there might just be something in it! Certainly there were
millions of pounds of profit for Mr. Kreuger who thus, by fostering for his own
purpose a realistic wartime precaution, was able to increase his sales manifold."

The site linked below (if link is missing, use http://www.greatdreams.com/three/three.htm)
gives some information about the symbolic significance of 3, or at least what
the author believes it to be, and examples of threes through history. One idea
about why 3 is so embedded in the human psyche is that it represents the nuclear
family: mother, father, child. (A family may have more than three members, but
the basic unit from a child's point of view is still mother, father, me.)

Threes
may not be so pervasive in other cultures as in Western culture. That would be
a question to watch for when doing research.